Descendant

all over my right cheek and all over the front of my coat. Then it smiled and said, “I want you to give me back my wheel, Mr. Billings.”

I tried to raise my gun so that I could give it a head shot, but it was far too strong for me. I strained and strained, with my teeth gritted and my elbow juddering, but I couldn’t manage to lift my arm more than a couple of inches. Duca had almost managed to pry the gun out of my hand when Jill appeared in the surgery doorway, unbalanced and bewildered. “What’s happening?” she said. She looked as if she was walking away from a car accident. “What’s happened to me?”

Duca turned, and as it turned, Terence held up the Bible — open, like before, at Apocalipsa, the Book of Revelation.

“Dah!” Duca protested, raising its hand to shield its face. It wasn’t totally blinded by the scripture, the way that Micky and Beryl had been, but all the same it twisted its head from side to side to keep the dazzle out of its eyes, and it had to let go of my wrist.

“Jim!” said Jill, reaching out for me.

Duca made a grab for her arm, presumably to use her as a human shield, but I fired at it again. I missed it, and blew a large chunk of plaster out of the wall, but Duca must have decided that it had had enough. It disappeared out of the front door, so fast that it was nothing but a gray flicker, like a moth’s wings.

“Terence!” I shouted. “Don’t let it get away!”

We hurried out of the house. We looked left and right, and at first we couldn’t see Duca anywhere. But the thin detective pointed upward and called out, “There, sir! Right behind you! Gone up the wall like a bleeding ferret!”

Terence and I turned around. Duca was climbing the ivy-covered wall, so fast that it had already reached the bedroom windows. The ivy rustled and tore as it surged its way upward, and it looked as if it were swimming through it, like a man swimming up a waterfall, rather than climbing. I raised my gun to take a shot at it, but by the time I had steadied my hand it had already reached the guttering and disappeared over the roof.

I ran around to the side of the house, just in time to see Duca leaping on top of the garage, and then to the roof of the garage next door, and then it was gone. There was no point in going after it now.

“That was bloody rotten luck,” said Terence, as I came back round to the front of the house.

I reached into my pocket and took out the wheel. “Not entirely,” I said, swinging it from side to side. “Duca’s still going to come looking for this.”

“You found it? That’s terrific. But now Duca knows who we are, doesn’t it, and what sort of a game we’re playing? You don’t think it’s just going to walk into a trap?”

“Of course not. We’ll have to be a little more ingenious, that’s all.”

The thin detective came up to me, shaking his head. “Never seen anything like that, sir. Never.”

“Never seen anything like what, detective?”

“Oh. Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Take your point. Never happened, sir, did it?”

“No, detective. It never happened.”

Field of Blood

I went back into the house to look for Jill. I found her sitting in the waiting room, with the receptionist leaning over her, offering her a glass of water.

“Your poor fiancee’s had a very nasty turn,” said the receptionist. “Mind you, I’m all in a tither myself.”

Jill was pale and trembling and there was perspiration on her upper lip, as if she were running a temperature. Her pupils were dilated, too, and she didn’t seem to be able to focus properly.

“Jill? Are you OK?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to me. Duca told me to lie on the couch. He said, ‘Lie on the couch, my dear,’ and that’s all I can remember.”

“It didn’t inject you with anything, did it?”

She frowned down at her arms. “I don’t think so. I can’t feel anything. I just feel so strange, as if I’ve been asleep.”

Terence came in. “I think we’d better get Jill home,” I said. “I don’t know what Duca did to her, but she’s not feeling too good.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” said the receptionist. “Why were you shooting at Dr. Duca? What am I supposed to do now?”

“I guess you’ll have to start looking for another job.”

We drove Jill back to her parents’ house in Purley and helped her out of the car.

“Jill! What’s happened to her? What’s wrong?” demanded her mother, as we brought her in through the front door.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Foxley, we simply don’t know. It could be delayed shock from yesterday. It could be the heat.”

“I should call the doctor.”

“Not just yet, if you don’t mind. Give her some time to rest first.”

Bullet clearly sensed that something was different about Jill because he stayed very close, nuzzling at her and whining in the back of his throat. Jill lay on the couch in the living room and covered her eyes with her hand.

“Do you have a headache?” I asked her.

“No, not really. I feel feverish, that’s all. Hot and cold, like when you have flu.”

“Maybe it is flu,” said Terence. “There’s a lot of it going about. I mean, that’s why we — ” He remembered at the last moment that Mrs. Foxley knew nothing about Operation Korean Flu, and finished his sentence with a meaningless flap of his hand.

Mrs. Foxley said, “I’ll bring you some Aspro, Jill. Would you like a cold drink?”

I used Mrs. Foxley’s phone to call Charles Frith at MI6. I explained that Duca had found out who we were, but we had taken its wheel and it was sure to come looking for it. I also asked that he send a forensic team down to search the Laurels from attic to basement, and the garden, too.

Charles Frith said, “Very well. But we really need to wrap this business up, old man, and as soon as possible. The press have been chasing the minister all day, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep it under wraps for very much longer.”

“I can’t make any promises, sir, but Duca’s going to want its wheel back, and if I know anything about Screechers, it’s going to be looking for revenge.”

I didn’t tell him about Jill, because I wanted to see how quickly she would recover, but I was seriously beginning to think that I would have to ask him for a substitute dog handler.

Ten minutes later, when I returned to the living room, Jill was asleep, with her mother sitting close beside her. I leaned over to make sure that she was still breathing, and then I lifted her eyelid with my thumb. She was staring at nothing at all, and her pupil was fixed, which told me that she wasn’t dreaming.

“Is she going to be all right?” asked her mother.

“I’m pretty sure of it. But call me if you notice any change in her condition.”

Terence and I drove back to the South Croydon Observer building. The morning had started sunny but a heavy bank of bronze-colored clouds had slowly rolled over from the southwest, and now it was gloomy and humid. I felt that I could hardly breathe.

“Any ideas what Duca might have done to her?” asked Terence.

“I’m not sure. Dead Screechers have a way of draining their victims’ resistance, so that they don’t struggle, even when the Screecher is actually cutting them open. Their victims know that they’re being killed, but they feel so lethargic that they can’t do anything to stop it. In Romania they call it the Weakness.”

“It doesn’t look as if Duca’s hurt her, though, does it?”

“I hope not. I think Duca sensed that I was upstairs, and that interrupted it. God, I blame myself. I should